Have you ever given any thought to the legacy you will leave behind when you move on into the Ancestral rim?

Are you doing anything, right now in your life that will leave a positive mark in your community or in this world?  Will your children’s children tell stories about you to their children?  Or will you just be another brotha or sista who came into this world, took up space, and moved on?  Even worse, are you just about verbal masturbation (or talking to get your own self off)?

In a recent blessing, I had an opportunity to meet and talk with the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and he suggested that we are failing to follow the legacy left for us.  This comment has been weighing heavily in my spirit, specifically with the transition of one of the last of our civil rights warriors, Mrs. Rosa Parks.  If we took time to look at our true history, we would know that the story of Mrs. Parks refusing to give her seat to a white man because her feet hurt, was just that…a story.  While there is no doubt that her feet did hurt, it was a strategic plan for her to get arrested, which was the first step in a historic economic boycott that ultimately became a movement.  As we are preparing to embark on another historic movement, we must be careful as to not fail to follow the legacy.

So, I ask again…what is the legacy you will leave behind?  Too often I encounter brothas and sistas who talk a good game, but their feet never move (meaning they can talk the talk, but fail to walk the walk).  Then many of us are so afraid of what they will say at the plantation or what family or friends will think (because they never walk the walk).  Of course there are those who may have issues with the messengers and therefore close their ears to the message, while continuing to talk a good game and standing still.

We need to take a closer look at the legacy our warrior Ancestors and Elders left for us.  They knew how to mobilize and organize the masses, and they did not require nor request advice or permission from Charlie or Anne.  The masses came prepared for battle.  They came from the root of the grass, from the church, from the streets, from the college campus and from the ivory towers.  When necessary, they knew how to be like “the spook who sat by the door.”  They knew how to infiltrate, and they understood that the movement was not solely for them, but for their children‘s children.

Now if you still cannot answer the question of the legacy you will leave behind, perhaps you need to make a conscious decision to join in the movement, stop the verbal masturbation and get to work.  Remember, “Nothing beats a failure but a try,” and never forget, Aluta Continua, “the struggle continues.”